Ol' Mutant Theatre: "Re-Animator" (1985)

Halloween’s nearly upon us, folks! You’ve probably already got your pumpkins carved and you’ve likely already been dipping into the sweets you bought for trick or treaters (relax, I won’t tell anyone). So now is the perfect time to open up The Ol' Mutant Theatre and take a look at one of my favourite B-Movies: "Re-Animator"!

Based on Herbert West-Reanimator by H.P Lovecraft, and directed by Stuart Gordon, "Re-Animator" follows a medical student by the name of Dan Cain, as he tries to get through school, get good grades and marry his sweetheart, Megan Halsey. Enter Herbert West! Mysterious gifted student who spent the opening scene stabbing his mentor with needles! (cue the "Odd Couple" theme!)

West turns up on the scene with some pretty radical ideas on brain death, catching some heat from Dr. Carl Hill, teacher and renowned surgeon who thinks of himself as an expert on the subject. West, of course, claims all of his papers and theories were plagiarised.

Looking for a room and a lab, West finds himself living with Cain, setting up shop in the basement. Everything goes well enough, with a bit of an odd friendship forming between the two. We see tension between West and Hill as well as Halsey complaining about how creepy West is, but it’s all fine. It’s fine it’s fine it’s fine.

Until Cain’s cat goes missing. That’s when things get wild.

Cain and Halsey eventually find the cat in West’s room, dead in the fridge along with bottles full of a green, glowing substance. They react as one might expect; with anger and a bit of disgust.

When Halsey leaves, West manages to convince Cain to listen to his explanation. He claims he never killed the cat and that seems to go down well enough, even if it IS unlikely that the cat died by any other means.

From left: The brilliant and creepy Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) and Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott).

Later in the night, Cain wakes up to a ruckus from downstairs in West’s lab. He descends to stairs to find West wrestling with the living, mangled corpse of the cat. After killing it (again) the two sit down and have a chat about West’s reanimation serum and how the cat, with its brains hanging out, can be brought back to life.

Cain and West go from waking up dead cats to experimenting in the morgue, as West convinces Cain to help him perfect the serum to the point where it just brings people back to life, rather than turns them into insane zombies.

For a B-Movie, it’s incredibly well directed and acted, with Jeffrey Combs playing a mysterious, slightly psychotic genius better than most actors ever could.

Herbert, deactivating a rowdy re-animated man.

It can get pretty darn silly at times, particularly when it comes to the violence and sex, but this IS a movie about bringing the dead back to life with glowing ooze, so it’s to be expected.

The acting is nearly flawless, for a B-Movie, too. As I said, Jeffrey Combs plays a fantastic mad scientist, but Bruce Abbot (Dan) gives an excellent performance as the straight man, the guy who asks the questions and plays the moral compass. The villain of the film, Dr Hill (played by David Gale) manages to be just the right kind of sinister and perverted as the film goes on, and Barbara Crampton turns Halsey, a character who could have been incredibly annoying, into a well rounded character.

The plot itself is basically Frankenstein (originally published in 1818, four years before Lovecraft’s story) with zombies, but it’s done in a way that seems fresh and modern, while still being relatively faithful to the source material.

This is by no means the scariest horror or even the best, but it is a great film. It stands out among B-Movies as one of the best and it can easily compete with many classic horror movies. It’s well worth your time this Halloween. Heck, every Halloween!

So, buy the DVD, grab the sweets you were saving for Trick or Treaters and enjoy. It’s also worth watching the sequels, and perhaps watch From Beyond, if you’re still in the mood for some Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs.

How did you like today's Ol' Mutant Theatre? Have you seen "Re-Animator"? You HAVE to! Sound off in the comments and have a creepy Halloween!